Procook Group (LSE:PROC) — Annual Results 2024

0:01 Good afternoon. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us. My name is Lee Tappanen, and I'm joined here with Dan Walden, our CFO. We're gonna walk you through our f y twenty four annual results from PROCOOK. But before we do that, I think we're gonna bit of a context setting for everybody online. Just a couple of slides of who PROCOOK is. Then I'll go through some highlights from last year. Dan will cover in more detail some of the financials in detail, and then I'll, finish off with some thoughts around the strategy for this year and the coming years ahead. So with that, Dan, I'll hand over to yourself. Thanks, Lee. Alright. Good morning. Well, actually, good afternoon, everybody. Let's start with a quick introduction about PROCOOK. So for those of you who are not familiar with the PROCOOK story, we are a retailer based in The UK, offering a extensive range of high quality affordable kitchenware, to customers throughout The UK.

0:58 We're based in Gloucester, with around 600 colleagues, in The UK. And we currently have 58 stores, and we also trade through our own website, which is procook.co.uk. In the last twelve months, we served over a 100,000,000 active customers on our database with around about 1,600,000 customer transactions in the year. We've got a a broad product range spanning everything you need for the kitchen, including tableware, cookware, knives, accessories, and electrical items, many of which are award winning, and, our customers constantly give us strong feedback about the quality of these products. We have a significant growth opportunity in The UK. Market is fragmented.

1:44 Our market share remains very low, and we have brand awareness opportunity to scale our business in the years ahead. What makes PROCOOK special? So we have a unique specialist proposition, which Lee's gonna talk about, in a few moments time. So I won't go into too much detail, but we have, incredibly strong service levels, both in store and online. We've received over a 110,005 star reviews on Trustpilot, so we are excellent rated on Trustpilot. Our price advantage through our direct source model allows us to offer pricing to customers, which is typically around 30% cheaper than a comparable product to the same quality from another another brand. Our own brand product means that we source our source them ourselves direct from manufacturers where we're

2:33 and then import the products without any middlemen. That allows us to offer outstanding quality and gives us strong margins. We have a strong focus on sustainability. We're a b corp, and we believe in being a force for good. And our passionate team, we're certified as a great place to work three years in a row. A bit of background. PROCOOK was, founded twenty eight years ago as a mail order business originally in 1996. Our first store opened in 1999 in Mansfield, and we're still there today. Our website launched in 2005, and we acquired a business called Steamer Trading, which also offered kitchenware throughout The UK in 2019, which added more national scale and retail footprint.

3:20 We completed an IPO on the London Stock Exchange in 2021. And this year, this last year, we've welcomed Lee as our new CEO, and we've developed a fresh vision and strategy for the years ahead. Also this year, in the last few months, we've expanded into electrical product ranges to complement our existing kitchenware offer. I'll hand back to Lee now. Thanks, Dan. So, just as a quick introduction, I joined the business, back in September of last year, and I thought it would useful to give a summary of, you know, my first impressions over those few months before we get into the highlights from last year's business performance. So I think we have a really unique proposition at PROCOOK. As Dan mentioned earlier, we're 100% our own private brand, our own brand products, direct sourced, which enables us to give, you know, very good value to our customers while whilst maintaining strong margins. So very unique proposition.

4:17 I've been incredibly impressed by the quality of our products consistently across all ranges. So maintaining that quality is incredibly important to us. I'll come back to the third point in a second. I spent a lot of time in our stores over the last few months, and I I believe we have a a very strong consistent level of customer service. It's something we're going to focus on even more going forward, but it really is a point of difference to a lot of other retailers that are more generalist.

4:44 And I think over the last two or three years, the business has invested very wisely for the future in terms of infrastructure, primarily buildings a dedicated warehouse that services our whole business. Previously, we're in multiple buildings, so we have an opportunity to drive great efficiencies from that warehouse. The third point on there, which I'll touch on, is that a challenge for us is that we have very low brand awareness. Less than 10% of customers in The UK unprompted know who PROCOOK is, and and only about 36% prompted. So there's an opportunity for us to get our brands more commonly known across the whole of The UK. Some highlights from last year. We relaunched our website back in mid September of last year.

5:30 Fair to say we had some teething problems at the time over over the coming weeks. We've managed to resolve those now, and we're continually in sort of a a continuous improvement of our website experience, but we've overcome those initial challenges back in September, October of last year. We did open two new stores last year, one in Trafford Centre, one in Watford, and we expanded a store in Cheshire Oaks and has given us real confidence of of how we can look at new store openings going forward. As Dan mentioned, we've expanded our product range into electricals. Phase one was last October with kettles and toasters, and then in March this year, another 12 products were added to our assortment. I'll talk later on about threat phases three and four, which are coming later this year.

6:18 We did take the chance back in November of last year to reset our value proposition across a couple of major categories we play in, which would be cookware and tableware, reset our value proposition, and and we were rewarded with some very significant unit increases from that point onwards. So really important for us to make sure we stand behind our unbeatable value. We transitioned out of multiple sites from a distribution point of view to a single site, as I mentioned, and we've all relocated to our new store support center in Gloucester. Finally, from a strategic highlight, our leadership team is now fully formed. Over the last few months, we appointed a new ecommerce director, Martin Navas, in October. In May of this year, Claire Tate joined us as our marketing director. And literally as of last week, Laurie Houghton has joined us as our commercial director. So the leadership team at PROCOOK is is now fully formed.

7:13 In terms of some performance highlights, we continue to drive market share gains. This is in the last year has been driven primarily from our retail stores. And we've we've seen as you many of you may have read this morning, improving sales momentum through q three, q four last year, and and even further more recently up until q one of this year, ended as recent as this past Sunday. And Dan will go through some details in a second. We delivered strong margin recovery, which was in line with our expectations and in line with what we shared previously. Our gross margin improved by four twenty basis points year on year, which is unraveling some of the heightened freight costs that came out of post COVID. We committed to working very focused on our cost and expense discipline, and we have landed a £3,000,000 improvement, which we shared at the start of last year.

8:06 All of that being said meant that PROCOOK got back to profitability for the year, delivering profit before tax of plus 1,000,000. And, obviously, that's then flowed through in terms of further cash generation, which I'm now gonna hand over to Dan. He's gonna talk a bit more detail around the financials. Thanks, Lee. So you can see from this chart at the beginning on the left hand side, you can see the significant year on year performance during the COVID period. And then in q one f y twenty three, we saw the impacts of the Ukraine, the Russian war in Ukraine, and the following impact on consumer demand,

8:47 discretionary spending in a high inflation environment, which clearly was significant and impacted our business performance. That said, we've retained the vast majority of sales that we have generated up to and before COVID, and that followed five years of significant compound, annual growth of around 30% for the five years proceeding. Our performance has gradually improved over the last five quarters. You can see q four stepping up to q one to q two to q three and q four ending in positive territory. And as the as Lee said, for the year as a whole, we delivered 1.7% growth, excluding the Amazon EU channels, we exited at the end of last year last financial year, so 2023, order to focus on the core UK market.

9:35 Retail retail has driven our growth in the last few months, and and in fact, throughout the whole of last year, we're plus 2.8% like for like growth and a 8.7% growth when you add in the effects of, the new stores that we opened in 2023 and 2024, and also the net effect of the three smaller garden center closures, that took place in March last year as we, decided to exit those stores. They were very small and not very profitable, so it seemed sensible for us to come out of those at the right time at the end of a lease break. I'll just touch I'll just touch on website performance. Excuse me. Our website was disrupted last year by platform migration. We launched a new platform, during summer last year, and we had a quite a significant impact on our ability to attract new customers onto the website through both search channels and our SEO channels, so paid search and SEO.

10:41 We worked hard to resolve those after transitioning fully, in mid September. And by Black Friday, we were largely on track with Google Shopping, and we were recovering well for SEO channels. And we've since gone on to deliver, stronger performance with conversion stepping up year on year.

11:01 In terms of the income statement as a whole, Lee mentioned that we've returned to profit in 2024 with gross profit improving, as we expected it to, and we've maintained strong cost discipline. In terms of gross margins, we're at 65.7 in f y twenty four, up 420 basis points. And this was driven primarily by the shipping impact, but also careful control of promotional, marketing activity and therefore discounting. We've reined that back in, especially as we implemented the price cuts in November 23 with a more of a focus on everyday low price. Our operating costs increased by 1,400,000 year on year to 39,000,000.

11:46 There's a number of cost headwinds within this. Obviously, there's the new and existing stores or new stores in particular that added cost into our cost base. We had quite a significant impact on payroll inflation. We've got 600 colleagues. We support the real living wage here in The UK. We're proud to do that, and we believe that everybody should have a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. So that's something we're committed to. And as a result, our overall pay inflation was over 8% last year. We've also got the new store support center, which is larger and provides capacity for up to five three to five times growth, in the years ahead. And that is larger than the two previous sites that we occupied, so it's added some extra operating costs.

12:33 In terms of the website, whilst volumes declined, the impact of the disruption meant that we had to spend more to attract customers onto our website year on year. Those two effects, volume and increased marketing spend, broadly offset each other last year. We invested in some above the line marketing activity with a campaign with celebrity chef Matt Tebbitt, and that cost around 600 k. Fortunately, the actions that we took around cost improvements in logistics, within our cost base, our headcount, and our stores allowed us to mitigate some of these cost pressures. The last point at the bottom of this slide is around non underlying items. So in 2023, we had a significant non underlying impact related to share based payments, but also impairment charges in relation to the two preexisting distribution centers that we exited, but also 4,400,000 charge on our retail stores.

13:31 We're taking no further impairments this year. We're happy with our retail estate, which is profitable and cash generative. And also, the remaining point three impact reflects the net disposal of those two previous leases and some SLT senior leadership team restructuring costs. Touching on free cash flow, we've had a good disciplined year, again, around cash management, making sure that we invest carefully, and we manage our working capital effectively. You can see the green bar in the middle of the chart, which shows a 3,600,000, net benefit from net working capital, and that's largely the result of reduction in inventory down to below £10,000,000 as we've optimized our stockpile, cleared through overstocks, and managed our intake very carefully.

14:23 Additionally, we've extended our supplier terms with a number of key suppliers as we progress through the year.

14:31 The second item I'll draw your attention to is in relation to CapEx. We've had a very disciplined approach to this in the last year, focusing on just two new store openings in Trafford Centre and in, Watford, plus also relocation of one of our top stores, which gives it more space in the Cheshire Oaks outlet centre. Overall, free cash flow of 2,000,000, which has helped us reduce our net debt from 2,800,000 down to 700,000 at the end of the financial year. Briefly touch on q one before handing back to Lee. We delivered continued trading momentum during the last quarter with positive like for likes in both retail and ecommerce channels. Total growth increased by 5.6%, and like for like was up 3.5% with 2.4% in retail continuing the trend from last year and an acceleration of performance in ecommerce at 5.5% year on year.

15:32 We continue to outperform the market and the opening of Bracknell, our new store, our first new store of f y twenty five, during April is helping us to accelerate growth.

15:45 Thanks, Dan. So let's move and shift gears to think about the future. One of my reflections on joining PROCOOK was that we have a great passion and great depth of knowledge around product. But equally, we need to get and drive a more customer centricity in the organization. So we've refreshed our customer promise, and it's a very simple slide to articulate what PROCOOK is all about. Our purpose is bringing joy to everyday cooking, and in doing that, we're have an unwavering focus on quality. As I said, we're very proud of our quality, and we're not we're not going to lose that credential. At the same time, we need to stay true to the original business model, which is unbeatable value of plus 30% below comparable products. We will double down even further on distinguishing ourselves through great customer service in store and a great customer experience online, which we're we're building on from the improvements made at the tail end of last year.

16:41 And then finally, as Dan touched on, we want to be a responsible retailer. We are b corp certified. We'll pay the real living wage to all of our colleagues, and we just want to be a force for good and do the right thing as we drive our business forward.

16:56 So we feel we're at a bit of an inflection point to drive growth. We've got momentum in the business going through over the last three quarters. We believe there's an opportunity to increase and expand our retail store footprint in The UK. We have a great product offer at the moment, but more strength in a couple of key categories. So there's opportunity to improve our product offer, including seasonal and expansion of electricals we touched on earlier. The customer experience will be a real focus going forward, and how do we address, what is still quite a low brand awareness across the country. Supply chain is a focus for us going forward. It's a transformational project to drive efficiencies in our business, and we're now able to take a different look at that with a single warehouse operation we have. So our plan for the future, three key numbers here for the medium term.

17:48 One is to get to a 100 stores in The UK, driving a 100,000,000 in sales revenue, and operating a profit margin of 10.

17:56 We have four key strategic priorities that I was just gonna walk through briefly now to enable us to get to those numbers in in the next coming medium term. Firstly, our store network. Currently at 58 stores today. And today, customers we only cover 35 of The UK population within a thirty minute drive time to our store. So there's a real challenge of basically having enough stores in The UK to service and drive that awareness. We are committed to get to that 100 stores in the medium term, and we have a plan for 10 store openings in the coming year with approximately five to 10 stores per year thereafter. We have a very good discipline financial model around payback criteria of less than two years.

18:42 And as we open up stores, we will continue to think about how we improve incrementally the look, feel, and inspiration within our stores. As I said, our our product offer is strong today, specifically in knives and cookware. We have quite good authority in both of those categories. And I mentioned that Laurie has joined us as commercial director only as of last week, and there's some work to be done around improving our clarity of assortment, pricing hierarchy. In addition, we will continue to drive expansion around categories where we under trade such as tableware. We will look to increase our assortment online with extended choice. But also just to touch again on electricals, the picture you can see here is of a a pizza oven that's due due to launch in July, a multifunctional unit that covers baking, air fry, and pizza oven, and multiple other functions as well. So we've got a a whole wave coming in July of new products.

19:39 And then towards the end of the year, we have a new series of very exciting coffee products coming as well. So a lot of expansion around newness. The final piece I would mention is our foray into seasonal has been quite low up until this point, and we will launch a Christmas assortment for the first time this year. And you'll see us going into summer next year with much more assortment and change specifically for the season.

20:04 Customer experience is is, you know, critical for us in our stores, and we we believe we've got a unique proposition today compared to a lot of other retailers. We look to double down on the customer experience online, and there's a great deal of work going on now to improve navigation, the checkout experience, the onboarding of new customers. So a lot of ongoing continuous improvement online, which is really encouraging.

20:28 And in stores, we've implemented new regional training managers with a real focus in improving our customer experience. And about eight weeks ago, we launched a net promoter score program so we can literally translate and measure customer experience every day in every store across the country and make sure that we understand exactly what customers are saying about their experience in our stores.

20:55 Brand awareness is, you know, major challenge for us, but also an opportunity. As we open up these 10 new stores that will naturally increase brand awareness, we get a great halo effect on ecommerce in those postal codes around the new store openings. That's an upside for us. We're also looking at additional marketplace channels, the way we can sell PROCOOK products. And a great deal of focus and progress has been made over the last couple of months around how do we think differently around social digital marketing. So you'll see a lot more coming from us, whether it be on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok of how we talk to our customers. In our stores and online, I think our personality is something we're going to really see differently going forward. That'll be driven by a lot of the seasonal piece I talked about.

21:44 We're trying to add some warmth, color, and inspiration to our stores going forward as well. In terms of driving efficiencies, supply chain transformation is a key work stream, and we're looking at this slightly differently than before. We're looking at it end to end all the way from stores through to warehouse. And rather than dealing in averages, we're looking to make sure that every store is treated appropriately. We have different sized stores, different volumes, different backroom capacities, and so on. So a more tailored store delivery schedule with the goal of increasing availability in our stores whilst also reducing inventory. This would be a great win for us in terms of driving efficiencies in stores. We don't want our colleagues doing non value add tasks when they could be actually engaging with customers.

22:34 I said earlier about the great investment in the past in infrastructure. One area we've not necessarily focused on integrated in the past was technology and how it can help drive our business. This is a relatively low cost approach. This example here on the image is just a handheld terminal that will be going into all of our stores to help them manage their inventory in a more efficient way, more accurately, and save them a great deal of time in the process. We'll also be looking at ways to improve our warehouse management system to make sure that we're actually getting, you know, the the most efficient approach to the supply chain we can possibly deliver. An area I'm committed to and passionate about is making sure that PROCOOK is seen as a great place to work. In terms of, training, one of the areas we're looking at in the field is driving regional training managers out in each of the three regions we have.

23:27 I think it's critical that all our colleagues are fully trained on both customer service, but also product knowledge, is critical to set us apart from our competition. And we've recently just launched some leadership development programs in the store support center for our our mid management teams as well. Finally, an area that PROCOOK have been outstanding in the past and we've continued to focus on is being a force for good around sustainability and and working within our local communities. We have a clear eight point plan to reduce our carbon emissions to get to net zero by 2040, and a big part of that is working with a reduced number of suppliers who have a real clear sustainability agenda. Locally, we engage with a couple of charities, but a new charity for us this year is Food Cycle, which is national with a goal of reducing food waste and working locally within communities across the country.

24:23 Handing back to Dan now, a couple of financial summaries, and I'll I'll I'll close this off at the end. So we're just, looking here at how the initiatives ladder up to our overall targets, just recapping a 100 stores, a 100,000,000 revenue, and 10% operating profit margin over the medium term. We can see here that 63,000,000 on the left hand side of 62.6 that we've delivered this year in terms of sales. Adding, adding 10 stores next year and five to 10 over the years ahead will allow us to increase our, retail revenue by 15 to 25,000,000 over the medium term. We'll drive like for like growth too by improving our product offer, enhancing service in both channels, and focusing on brand awareness and building the number of customers who visit our website and come to our stores.

25:14 Additionally, the improvements in supply chain will contribute 1 to 2,000,000. We expect through improved availability, and therefore, better conversion for customers. So that's how we see the, the journey sort of panning out over the medium term. If I focus more closely in on this current year briefly, so f y twenty five, we plan to open 10 new stores. We've got one already opened in Bracknell. We've got four more that are legally committed and five more progressing through legals at this stage. We expect low single digit like for like revenue growth primarily driven by ecommerce, which suffered the disruption last year. Our gross margin of 65.7% last year, we expect to remain pretty similar year on year.

26:04 I know there's a question about Red Sea, which we'll touch on shortly. But we you know, notwithstanding the pressures within the Red Sea, we are currently in a in in a reasonably strong position. We've ordered stock earlier, and we are, reasonably confident that we can maintain some of the gross profit margins. Channel costs inevitably will grow with volume. So as we add more stores and also as we deliver more volume, more sales through our website, we will see those costs increase. Over time, we expect to leverage our fixed cost base as we progress through, the medium term, allowing us to improve our operating profit margins. Non underlying costs in the year ahead, expect to be related to share based payments, a bit of a legacy effect from the IPO.

26:53 So this anniversary, in November this year, and that will be the end of those IPO share based payments. So 500,000 expected this financial year. And just to recap for those, who who are wondering about our sales performance, we typically deliver around 40% of our full year sales within the first half, 60% coming in the second half, and quite a strong weighting, of performance to that golden quarter during, November and December, early January in particular. From a cash flow perspective, our working capital, having brought down stock to a a clean position, we will now need to reinvest in inventory as we scale our business upwards.

27:39 We expect around a million pound investment this year. From a CapEx perspective, as we open 10 new stores, we expect each new store to cost in the region of £300,000 each. We typically open a new store in about four to five weeks, and so we are able to generate a strong payback within the first two years. We do not expect any cash tax payments in f y twenty five. Indeed, we've got a deferred tax assets on the balance sheet that we expect will be partially utilized in the year ahead. And as we invest for growth with new store openings in particular, this financial year, we do not currently anticipate any dividend payments in the f y twenty five financial year. Thanks, Dan. So just to summarize before we go to we've got a couple of questions already. We'll take those after this. So, you know, we had, you know, seen great momentum coming out of last year. We believe the the business has stabilized somewhat, and we've returned to profitability last year, which is, you know, a great position to be in. I think we have much more clarity now around the strategic opportunities ahead of us.

28:48 You'll see us move to becoming much more of a customer centric performance driven business, enable us to drive, you know, the strong product offering we have and have a unique proposition compared to other retailers in a space that really nobody else is owning. I see us getting to an accelerated profitable sales growth to get to those key three numbers that we talked about a couple of times, which would be a 100 stores in The UK driving a 100,000,000 revenue at 10% operating profit margin in the medium term. So we've got a few questions come up. Maybe I'll take the first one. Dan, take the next one. Mhmm. So we've got a question here. I'll read them out so everyone can understand what's being asked. The question comes from Boone Kay. Thank you, Boone. The question is, can you provide some commentary on the recent Red Sea shipping disruptions and the general shipping cost increases and the impact to PROCOOK in h one so far.

29:42 So, yes, I think the whole industry is experiencing some disruption. We certainly have seen some delays to our shipments. We have proactively got ahead of some of the key seasonal buys for the November December period to protect that that really important sales drive in two months. Are we seeing disruption in terms of cost? Yes. There has been inflation. And I think we've done a very good job initially through the contract we have to minimize that effect. And this is really a moving target at the moment, but we believe we've done all of the proactive planning that we could have done over the last six to eight weeks to offset that. But, you know, this is very much a weekly discussion that's moving as we progress through the summer, and no one has really line of sight to when this will end, but, we're managing it carefully.

30:31 I'll pick up this, next question from Andrew m. Thank you, Andrew. What were the key considerations when selecting locations for the new stores, Trafford Centre and Watford and the upsize relocation in Cheshire Oaks, and how have these new and relocated stores performed since their openings? Well, let's let's start with the new stores. So Trafford Centre and Watford. Trafford Centre is one of The UK's, largest and most popular regional shopping malls generates. So it it benefits from 35,000,000, customers visiting the center each year with around a 180 from memory stores, within that that center. It's a a leisure destination. Customers go there and spend, you know, a good proportion of a day shopping, eating.

31:20 There's bowling. There's, you know, cinemas and all sorts of activities. So it's the kind of destination where we do really well. We've picked a store that's in a great location on the Ground Floor, the busiest footfall part of the mall, where we can have a a benefit from a high degree of passing footfall. The store's performing really well already, and it's early days because we've got no real presence around the Manchester area, but it's already meeting our actually exceeding our targets. We've already increased the targets for Trafford Centre store in the six months since it's opened. So we're really pleased with that one. Watford store is in the Atria Centre in Central Watford. It's a key shopping district within the M 25, a relatively affluent population, and it has lots of passing trade. There's a good mix of tenants within the center, and customers passing through from train stations straight stations to offices and so on. So, again, great location to raise brand awareness.

32:22 The store's performing really well so far. We're working hard to drive up local awareness and drive footfall in that area, which is a big focus for us. But, again, we're happy with its performance, in in in the early days. Cheshire Oaks is a store that we've been in for many years. It's an outlet center over to well, just to the, West of Cheshire, Chester, I should say. It's incredibly popular. It's The UK's second, outlet center after Vista Vista Village, and, we've been there for many years. I think this is our third, perhaps fourth location. The store we had before was 1,800 square foot. It was one of our top five stores. We've extended that now to 2,600 square foot.

33:11 And that store with a a proportionate increase in space is driving exactly the same proportionate increase in revenue, in the early days, and we're still driving forwards on that, and we think we'll do better. It's got a double frontage side return. So it's got pre great presence and visibility. And the team who run the store, Joe and the team who run the store, do a fantastic job of serving customers, many of whom have known us for many years. So we're really pleased. It's now actually become our number one store in the in the country and and continues to go from strength to strength. Great. Thanks, Dan. I'll take the next one. This is from Gary b. How has the market reception been to the new small kitchen electrical range, and how have these products performed in terms of sales and customer feedback?

33:58 So this is a really important category for us. It's incremental. It's a lot of newness. Customer reaction's been great to the point at which we are, on some items, chasing inventory to come in because they sold through better than we expected, which is a great situation to be in. They currently are about 5% of our total sales straight out of the gate. So, you know, in line with or slightly ahead of our expectations. And what I would say in terms of both the quality and value, if you look at some of the independent media and PR coverage, we've got great response from the likes of Good Housekeeping, BBC Good Food, which have given us rave reviews on multiple items that we've launched. So we're we're really excited about what's gonna come for the balance of this year in phase three and phase four.

34:45 Okay. I'll pick up another question from Boone, actually. Thank you, Boone. Can you provide guidance on the distribution of the 10 new expected store openings quarter by quarter? I can't give it precisely because at this stage, the access dates and the opening dates are a little fluid. As I say, we've opened one. I expect we'll open a couple more, in quarter two over summer. Hopefully, we'll get a few more open before peak. So let's say another three to four open before our peak trading period, and then the balance will be in the final quarter of the year. So I expect reasonably well distributed throughout the throughout the financial year. Okay. But two questions now from Tim Jay. I'll take the first one. Tim's asking, what do you expect for the online growth going forward?

35:34 So as Dan, you know, suggested and we'll see the numbers last year, there was some challenging numbers last year primarily driven by the movement and migration to the new site. So we're lapping some softer numbers online. We would expect the current performance in q one to continue in positive like for like territory, and if anything, slightly accelerate as we lap some of those numbers for the balance of the year. So we're optimistic. I think the team are doing a great job of improving some of the challenges that came out of last summer. So we're optimistic going forward for our e com team and and the results they're going to deliver. I'll pick up the next one from Tim. We'll keep taking it internally. Tim, thank you. Can you elaborate on the online content strategy? If you go into a store, you receive a lot of explaining online. The company is has no explanation videos for the electrical range.

36:26 I wish there could be more engaging content online to interact with customers. And thank you for yeah. Right. So, Tim, thanks for question. You are right. That's why we've called out user experience online as a key opportunity for us to improve on. We know our stores, our colleagues are passionate, and they are really well trained. They know our products inside out, and they do a great job of serving customers and giving them helpful advice and explaining the hints, tips, how to use guides that we we we would expect for products that we sell in store. Online, we're not so good. Online is much more functional. It's a lot more self-service, and we can certainly move forward with new additional customer functionality to help customers understand the features and benefits of the products that we offer, to help them make the shopping experience easier, but also to provide inspiration, guidance, recipes, hints and tips, and so on about the products that we serve.

37:25 It's it's a work in progress. It's gonna take some time, but we've got Martha and the team in our ecommerce team really focused on driving user experience and working on all of those customer benefits over the years ahead. K. Jake, if you could scroll down to further question, that would be great. Give you a second. You can go down. Is there anything further beyond that? This one. No. I'll I'll answer the one from At least in one Yeah. Here we got one more. Yeah. Do do you you wanna cover that one? No. You can cover it. Yeah. So, Philip, we've got a question about Fackleman. For those who don't know who Fackleman are, they are a German, manufacturer and producer distributor of, kitchen accessories. They have known about the PROCOOK business for many years being completely transparent.

38:13 They have bought shares in PROCOOK. We understand on an opportunistic basis. So they do hold a shareholding, which is just above 10%. We speak to them as a normal investor, you know, from time to time, once or twice a year. The question here is, do you think they will acquire PROCOOK in the future? We have not received anything, that would suggest that. Indeed, we've had no comment from them about such a plan. So, at the moment, we believe that they are, you know, keen to see PROCOOK grow and succeed, and we understand they want to be part of that journey as an investor. Great. So I think we're pretty much at time, and we've we've gone through all the questions. So, Jake, I think we're gonna hand it back to you. Absolutely, Lee Dan. That's great. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation and for addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this afternoon.

39:07 Lee, perhaps before really just looking to redirect those now on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company. If I could please just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with, that would be great. Absolutely. So, you know, what we're really pleased about is the momentum in the business. You know, going into this year with positive track record of q three, q four, and then positive like for like of 3.5% in q one is very encouraging. I think the other piece is that, you know, we have clarity around the strategic initiatives that we have going forward, and we're excited. We feel this is like a quite inflection point for the company. And to be opening new stores in this in the current environment is is great, and we are, you know, we're planful of the future, not just this one year ahead.

39:57 We're already looking forward to f y twenty six and beyond. So we're excited about the future. We've got a lot of newness coming through products, and we hope to see a lot of people both in our stores and online shopping with us. Lee, that's great. And thank you, once again for updating investors this afternoon. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the management team can really better understand, your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of management team of PROCOOK GROUP PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all.